Talk Talk - Laughing Stock

The final word from one of music's most uncompromising and visionary artists. Released on September 16, 1991 through Verve Records, Laughing Stock is Talk Talk's fifth and last studio album, and the record that completed what many now regard as one of the most extraordinary creative trilogies in the history of recorded music. After acrimoniously leaving EMI, Mark Hollis and the band found in Verve a label willing to offer full creative freedom with no interference, and they made the most of it completely.

Recorded at Wessex Sound Studios in London between September 1990 and April 1991 with producer Tim Friese-Greene and engineer Phill Brown, the album was built from hundreds of hours of improvised performances from a remarkable ensemble that included up to seven violists at a time, alongside trumpet, contrabass clarinet, harmonica, cello, and acoustic bass. Up to 90 percent of those recordings were discarded as Hollis pursued his singular vision with characteristic perfectionism, splicing tape by hand and compiling bass lines from multiple performances across as many as 80 tracks per song. As Hollis himself put it at the time, "the silence is above everything. I would rather hear one note than I would two, and I would rather hear silence than I would one note."

The result is an album of staggering delicacy and depth, picking up where Spirit Of Eden left off and moving even further into uncharted territory, the jazz influences of its predecessor beginning to dissolve into something more abstract and more luminous. Opening track "Myrrhman" begins with 15 seconds of amplifier hiss. The nine-minute centerpiece "After The Flood" unfolds on a bed of droning strings. The closing "Runeii" drifts away into pure ambient space. Along with Spirit Of Eden and Slint's Spiderland, AllMusic has identified Laughing Stock as one of the primary catalysts of the post-rock genre, an influence cited directly by Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Elbow, and Bon Iver among many others.

Virtually ignored on its initial release, the album reached number 26 on the UK chart with no singles, no music videos, and no live shows to support it. Talk Talk disbanded quietly shortly after. The album's stature has grown every year since, and it is now widely regarded as a timeless masterpiece, one that sounds as if it could have been made at any point in history and belongs entirely to none of them.